Innogistic Customer, Yorkshire Water, has been awarded a finalists place in the Environmental Category at the 2009 Utility Industry Achievement Awards. The company has been nominated for its Biodiversity Action Plan (aka BAP), a key element of which is the implementation of GIS based tools developed by Innogistic.

Alex Curtis, the Lead Advisor for Biodiversity within Yorkshire Water’s Environment Strategy Team, explains the importance of this achievement: “Our nomination is recognition for the innovative nature of our company’s strategic approach to the protection of Biodiversity.   As a water utility we must ensure we are compliant with biodiversity protection laws and manage any environmental impacts of our activities to conserve and enhance biodiversity on our land. 

We have chosen to make biodiversity an integral part of our business planning and operations to ensure that we understand and consider the biodiversity risks within every operational decision.  As well as helping to conserve biodiversity in Yorkshire the BAP GIS tool will identify opportunites to enhance biodiversity on our sites. Having the right tools available for our staff is a vital element of this strategy”. 

Yorkshire Water’s corporate GIS, known internally as ‘Odyssey’, was developed using Innogistic’s OpenWINGS geospatial solution. It is the second most used software tool in the company after e-mail and is linked into other corporate IT architecture such as their CRM system. Kevin North, Innogistic’s Utilities Business Manager explains. “Initially Yorkshire Water asked us to create elements within Odyssey which could act as a reporting system on Biodiversity and the impact of any planned work or incidents. However, since commencing this project it has expanded to the point where Odyssey now includes many more interesting BAP features and has also involved research input from Leeds University. It has been a really interesting project to work on.”

Alex Curtis concluded by saying; “The BAP GIS tool is a keystone of Yorkshire Water’s Biodiversity Strategy and helps us conserve the beautiful environment in the Yorkshire region. This recognition is a big feather in both Innogistic’s and our cap.